Last week The Pirate Bay added a new IP-address which allows users to circumvent the many court-ordered blockades against the site. While this proved to be quite effective, the Hollywood backed anti-piracy group BREIN has already been to court to demand a block against this new address. But that won't deter The Pirate Bay, who say they are fully prepared for an extended game of whac-a-mole using the hundreds of IP addresses they have available.

The Pirate Bay is arguably the most censored website on the Internet.

Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site, and the end is still not in sight.

Within a few days, a new deadline for five UK and five Dutch Internet providers passes. This means that millions more will be unable to access The Pirate Bay, at least, that is the plan.

Last week The Pirate Bay team responded to the blockades by adding a new IP-address. The new location was setup to make it easier for people to start their own dedicated proxy sites, but it also allows blocked Pirate Bay visitors to gain access to the site.

Instead of the normal address they simply go to 194.71.107.80, bypassing the court order – for the time being at least.

The new IP-address represents a new thorn in the side of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, who quickly asked ISPs to censor that too. Unfortunately for them the providers refused to do so, so the group had to go to court once again last week to get the added IP-address blocked as well.

Right before the weekend BREIN succeeded with the court ordering an ex-parte injunction for the new address. However, according to comments coming out of The Pirate Bay, this could just be the start of an extended game of whac-a-mole.

“Let me get the next IP-address lined up,” a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak. “We have hundreds, so let’s see many times they will respond,” he added.

We were told that if the new IP-address is blocked again, they will simply add a new one. This means that BREIN would have to file for another ex-parte injunction, a process that may repeat itself hundreds of times.

The Pirate Bay insider did emphasize that the new IP wasn’t meant for people to bypass the blocks directly, but to make it easier and more safe to create proxy sites. In this regard, it is irrelevant whether the IP-address is blocked or not.

However, it’s well known that The Pirate Bay isn’t averse to a little dueling with anti-piracy outfits, so they’re going to play along.

“Now that I know it’s annoying to BREIN, of course we’ll add more IPs. Every time they get an order, we’ll add a new one, for the next year or so,” TorrentFreak was told.

The result is an almost endless IP-address whac-a-mole.

The Pirate Bay blockades are a good example of how hard it is to completely get a website offline. Even if all Pirate Bay domains and IP-addresses are blocked there are plenty of other ways to access the torrent site, including hundreds of proxy sites.

At the same time, the blockades make The Pirate Bay front page news. As we’ve seen before, this can result in a healthy traffic boost for the deviant torrent site. That begs the question of whether these censorship attempts aren’t doing more ‘harm’ than ‘good’ for copyright holders.